San Jose was intentionally planned as a racially segregated city. Single-family zoning, which originated in Berkeley, Calif. in 1916, reserved exclusive communities for wealthier and whiter neighbors and deliberately excluded hardworking people of color. This practice spread to other cities. Today, because we know better, we are held accountable to dismantle this racist planning tool...

The Republican Party. The right-wing anti-elite populism of the base of the Republican Party, its disdain for civility and compromise during the past 12 years, the accommodation and then subservience of the Republican Party to Donald Trump, and Trump’s inflaming the fear and racism of his base with lies all led to the Jan. 6...

In the 1940’s when my grandfather Gustavo Gutierrez arrived in San Jose as a “bracero,” there was only one area of the city that welcomed him to settle down and make a home — East San Jose. The roots of District 5 are deep with Mexican American families as well as newly arrived immigrants from...

We must put an end to the persistent and horrific vilifying of our unsheltered neighbors. In a recent San José Spotlight article, we heard one person call to “rid the world of these parasites.” In an email received in response to this article, we heard another person say: “It IS us vs. them” and go...

The San Jose City Council on Tuesday led a righteous crusade against the evil conspirings of labor organizers and grocery store workers fighting for a $5 pay increase at stores with 300 national employees or more. The horror! Mayor Sam Liccardo and Councilmembers Dev Davis and Matt Mahan fought back against this socialist onslaught, and...

COVID-19 infections continue to rise across California, including in Santa Clara County, where ICU beds are nearly full. The virus continues to harm people of color disproportionately. According to the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health Emergency Operations Center, Latinx people have suffered 51% of the county’s COVID cases, despite being only 25.8 percent of the population....

Last year we called workers essential. This year let’s treat them like they are. The pandemic has made clear what we’ve known for a long time: the most important jobs in our society aren’t the billionaire investors and corporate executives. Rather, we rely most on the people whose labor keeps our society running: the farmworkers,...

Alone in their homes, elders are valiantly trying to protect themselves and others against the virus. In doing so, they are at enhanced risk from another threat — scammers sneaking into our grandparents’ isolated lives through the phone, the mail or the internet. Across the nation, elders lose billions of dollars annually to fraud. Since...

The presidential inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20 imbued in me a feeling almost like a purge—a weight off the shoulders, the shrugging off of a cross to bear, the removal of a screwdriver in the eyeball. Aside from the obvious significance of the ceremony, and the blessed absence of shrillness that accompanied it, I was...

Any crackpot, Third World dictator could have told President Trump the military was needed for a successful coup d’état. Looking back, Trump’s administration removed the USS Theodore Roosevelt’s courageous Capt. Brett Crozier for standing up for his COVID-19 ravaged crew. Trump incessantly and crudely, criticized war hero and distinguished statesman John McCain even while the...